12 Sep Reconnecting with R.O.C.K. Alumni

As I was setting up for our first-ever R.O.C.K. Alumni barbecue, I felt a bit of nervous energy in anticipation of seeing our past participants, some of whom I hadn’t seen in well over a decade. Over the prior few months, my team had been utilizing old phone numbers, email addresses and social media to get in contact with many of our former R.O.C.K.ers who had drifted away from us over the years. It was a challenging and time-consuming effort, but we ended up with a healthy list of alumni and were excited to bring them together to reunite. As these young adults arrived, I instantly had a vision in my head of each one of them running around dribbling a basketball at Skill Drills or shooting down the water slide at Lil’ Kid Camp. There was Dunya, now a mother of two children, with the same bright smile that I can never forget. Mumtaz was there with his desire to please as was the case many years ago (he was always the first to raise his hand when asked to name a virtue of R.O.C.K.). There were the twins, Abigail and Alysa, both of whom recently graduated from UC Davis and had lots of great R.O.C.K. memories. It was touching and overwhelming to see so many past participants who grew up in our program and are now healthy and successful adults. I am proud to serve R.O.C.K. and this barbecue only reinforced the reason I do the work I do.